Do your own Conveyancing v Cheap Conveyancing Solicitors

Posted by Legal Help Info on January 18th, 2018

I have a friend who did it just once. He went to Staples and bought a Law Pack kit and a book and proceeded to do his own conveyancing. Risky really if you don’t know what to look for when the search results come back and I seem to remember that he was daunted by the fact that the other party solicitors didn’t like the fact that an unqualified layperson was acting independently and outside of the auspices of the Law Society so they deliberately appeared to slow the communication process down and the whole thing took nearly double the time it should have taken.

So what are the benefits of doing your own conveyancing?

Very few to be honest apart from a great saving in cost, although most online conveyancers are only doing the service for around £120 if you strip all the fixed fees and disbursements out of the quotes.

Personally, I don’t think it’s worth the risk for a saving of just £120 as it’s most specialised and a real brain buster if you are not particularly legal minded. What if you miss something important and 6 years later a motorway is going to be passing through your lounge!

So why do people do their own conveyancing apart from costs savings?

Well another reason is the fear of gazumping.

If the legal work is coming along slowly because of delays in the legal process, another buyer could come along and make a better offer which the seller can legally accept up to the point where contracts are exchanged. Gazumping is not as common today but it still goes on and very often slow solicitors were taking the blame for enabling this practice and occasionally for perhaps being a party to it. If you do your own conveyancing you know exactly where you are in the process pipeline and should be able to help clear any blockages yourself.

Complications could arise if you try to do your own conveyancing because some lenders will insist that only recognised and authorised solicitors should be parties to the conveyancing therefore if you’re not qualified and not on the list you won’t get your mortgage and you won’t get the conveyancing done either.

You should also consider the time factor if you are going to consider doing your own conveyancing. They say that you should set aside 15-20 hours to study up and perform all the tasks needed so you need to weigh up the value of those 15-20 hours. If you run your own business, say as a mechanic, and usually charge your labour out at £50 per hour that’s up to £1,000 of chargeable time you can lose if you’re doing conveyancing instead of fixing somebody’s engine. Or if you have a hobby or like camping with the family on the weekends you lose nearly 2 and a half days of family bonding time by doing the conveyancing instead.

Perhaps you would be better off finding a firm of cheap conveyancing solicitors yourself rather than trying to do the job yourself. To be honest, if you cannot find a firm of cheap conveyancing solicitors locally you can find one online and with the price of online conveyancing services where you can instruct and communicate using the Internet I’d go for the low cost, no waste of my time, service knowing that the case is in the hands of a professional – regardless of the fact that I’ll never meet them or know what they look like!